



SPEECH 


OF 


HON. J. R. TYSON, OF PENNSYLVANIA, 


ON THE 


RESOLUTIONS REPORTED FROM THE COMMITTEE 


ON THE ALLEGED 


ASSAULT BY 3 R. BROOKS ON SENATOR SUMNER. 



» 


DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRHeENTATIVES, JULY 12, 1856. 

. • 


WASHINGTO.T: 

PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBS OFFICE. 
. • 1856 . 





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THE SUMNER ASSAULT 


The House having under consideration the report of the 
committee on the alleged assault of Hon. Preston S. 
Brooks on Hon. Charles Somner, of the Senate; and 
resolutions to expel and censure— 

Mr. TYSON said: 

Mr. Speaker: From the moment these resolu¬ 
tions came before the House, now nearly a week 
ago, I have endeavored, at every opportunity, 
to attract the eye and ear of the Speaker, for the 
purpose of submitting my views on the consti¬ 
tutional question which they involve. But it 
has so happened that all my efforts have been 
ineffectual until the present time, when, in order 
to bring the debate to a close, we are under the 
operation of a rule which forbids any extended i 
discussion. It was my intention to attempt to! 
show, what is so confidently denied by the mi¬ 
nority report, that the jurisdiction of the House | 
of Representatives over misdemeanors committed | 
out of its presence, is as unquestionable as its ex-1 
ercise, in this case, is necessary. It is important 
for the credit of the House, and the credit of the 
country, that we should examine with care the I 
limits of our constitutional power, in order that! 
this question of jurisdiction may be finally set-1 
tied, and at rest nowand for the future. 

But before turning to this precise subject, per¬ 
mit me to say a word or two, rather by way of | 
notice than of extended examination, of disap -1 
proval rather than reply, in answer to some gen¬ 
eral sentiments which have been started in the { 
course of this debate. Much of the discussion has ' 
gone off in sallies on the freedom of speech, and i 
the freedom of the press, and in disquisitions on 
the right of individuals to redress the wrongs of 
themselves and their friends, for the abuses of 
either. The whole spirit of the debate reveals 
as deep-seated a feeling in some portions of this 
country to elevate the self-remedy of personal 
redress into a higher law, as we know there is 
in others to call a higher law to their aid in oppos¬ 
ing great constitutional enactments for the recla¬ 
mation of fugitive slaves. Real liberty is in equal 


danger from both these excesses, wherever such 
mistaken notions of it exist, wherever such mad 
licentiousness prevails. 

Ajeu d ’esprit of Dr. Franklin, in one of his lively 
anonymous essays, has been quoted as grave au¬ 
thority to prove that he was in favor of correcting 
the liberty of the press by a protective grant of the 
liberty of the cudgel. The passage has been pa¬ 
raded with the gravity of a case in point. Franklin 
prepared the article for a newspaper, called the 
Federal Gazette. He entitled it “An account 
of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Penn¬ 
sylvania, viz: the Court of the Press.” His sub¬ 
ject, which the title so well describes, is distrib¬ 
uted into various heads, such as the Power of the 
Court, its Practice, &c., until he comes to the 
checks where he laughingly discourses on the 
employment of the cudgel. In this part of his 
essay, he presents a plan, alike facetious and inge¬ 
nious, for the restoration of what he describes 
as an ancient privilege. But before counseling 
such an extremity as the old-fashioned resort to 
a drubbing, he coolly advises, in the first place, to 
visit personality and defamation with a “mod¬ 
erate” punishment, such as “ tarring, featherings 
and tossing in a blanket. ” Have those innocent 
gentlemen, who see in this delightful juvenescence 
of an old man, the authority of the philosophic 
Franklin, ever heard of that delicate figure m 
rhetoric, called irony'I The essay in question was 
never intended to be serious. It is only a capital 
specimen of ironical pleasantry and pungent 

ScitirG • 

Blackstone tells us that, by the common law 
of England, a husband could legally punish his 
wife by administering to her moderate correc¬ 
tion. He pleasantly adds that, though this right 
had passed away, the lower classes of the people 
who always liked the old common law, showed 
their attachment to it by keeping up the old prac¬ 
tice. Are the happy strokes of Addison in his 
sportive descriptions of Sir Roger de Coverley, 
of our own Irving in his playful excursions, of 
, Shakspeare in his numerous characters, of Sidney 











4 


Smith in his witty veins, to be taken as types of 
their real opinions on the subjects they profess to 
treat? As well might Blackstone be cited in favor 
of whipping wives, as the sly humor of Frank¬ 
lin’s article be quoted in vindication of the use of 
the cudgel. All readers know what opinions the 
political and philosophical writings of Franklin 
enforce. For grave legislators, for the supporters 
of law and order, his name is unchangeably iden¬ 
tified with the opposite doctrine. He thought 
that the moral supremacy of law over physical 
violence, was one of the indispensable props of 
the whole fabric of social liberty. So far is it from 
the fact that this humorous essay furnishes an 
index of his real opinion, that the father of Amer¬ 
ican printers, true to the dignity of his calling, 
can be quoted for the sentiment written in 1737— 
some fifty years before—that the true remedy for 
the falsehood and injustice of the press is to be 
found in those neutralizing and counteracting in¬ 
fluences which are secured by its freedom. Expe¬ 
rience has proved, in this country, that the laic is 
an adequate safeguard from the effects of its wan¬ 
tonness, and a just avenger of its excesses. And 
history has shown, in England as well as here, 
that its own unshackled freedom is the best re¬ 
straint upon its licentiousness, and the best disin¬ 
fector of its poisonous exhalations. 

It was once feared, sir, that the abuses of the 
press would at last prove the grave of its free¬ 
dom. However bad men—as Milton says in 
speaking of such— 

^‘License they mean, when they cry, liberty”— 

may abuse it, the apprehension of such a conse¬ 
quence is now shared by few. The press, unlike, 
those venomous reptiles which, we are told, some¬ 
times sting themselves to death, is rather, in this 
respect, to be compared to our undying Constitu¬ 
tion. Self-poised, self-sustaining, and preeminent, 
it possesses, like the press, within itself, the 
means of rectifying its own evils, without bring¬ 
ing with the correction the concomitant and 
greater ill of self-abandonment or revolutionary 
change. 

An argument must be hard pressed for author¬ 
ity to sustain it, which will deliberately summon 
to its aid such an effusion, or quote the sentiment 
of Sismondi for the continuance of the practice 
of dueling. The historian of Southern Europe 
would doubtless recognize the conventional rules 
of the duello for the decision of personal disputes, 
as an important step in the march of civilization, 
from those rude ages in which sudden and vin¬ 
dictive passions decided the contest. But the 
same thing may be said of many other improve¬ 
ments on past times. They are not merely un¬ 
necessary now, but their adoption or continuance 
would carry us back to the barbarous ages which 
they characterized, and of which they formed a 
part. As civilization advances, the cudgel and 
the duel give place to those moral appliances 
which distinguish a higher civilization, a more 
advanced stage of society. A people must lose 
in the race of refinement, or betray the absence of 
it, in proportion as they adopt or try to perpetu¬ 
ate the usages of semi-barbarous times. The 
half-cut and meager civilization of which Sis- I 


) 


mondi wrote, is no more applicable to our own 
times and country than is the resurrection of 
dead and buried chivalry in the person of a Don 
Gtuixote, to redress the wrongs of injured inno¬ 
cence. Equally good reasons, drawn from his¬ 
torical analogies, can be given in favor of whip¬ 
ping a wife for misconduct as for continuing the 
duello, or using a cudgel in debate. But I dismiss 
the topic. 

The grave circumstances attending the trans¬ 
action before the House, the number of similar 
occurrences which recent times have produced, 
and the sad consequences to the national charac¬ 
ter which they entail, require a full consideration 
of the jurisdiction of Congress over acts of vio¬ 
lence on the part of its members. 

If instances have indeed happened, such as we 
have heard recounted on this floor—I will not say 
with levity, but certainly without disapproval— 
worthy rather of the cock-pit and the ring, than 
an assembly of gentlemen invested with legisla¬ 
tive power—I think the feeling of the country 
would be rather in favor of covering up such dis¬ 
graces than revealing them, for our own shame 
and the condemnation of mankind. If they have 
been sometimes winked at, it is high time to apply 
a corrective, lest continued impunity should tend 
to their continued recurrence. I come, therefore, 
to the immediate subject in hand. 

Sir, 1 cannot subscribe to the doctrine of the 
minority report, so plausibly and ably defended 
by its author, the honorable gentleman from 
Georgia, [Mr. Cobb.] The attention I have given 
to this subject satisfies me that the principles of 
the report are dangerous and wrong. It repudi¬ 
ates altogether the authority of English prece¬ 
dents, and traces, while it confines, all the power 
of either House over, and in defense of, its own 
members, to those few words of the Constitution 
in the second clause of the fifth section of the first 
article, which speak of disorderly behavior. It does 
not stop here. In construing this clause, it re¬ 
stricts the jurisdiction of the two branches of 
Congress to such acts of disorder as may be com¬ 
mitted in the presence of either body, in contra¬ 
vention of its written rules. It gives to neither 
House over its members any greater power—any 
further latitude than this. Sir, I propose to show 
that the disciplinary power of the House is more 
ample than this. 

That British precedents are tinged with the 
omnipotent power of Parliament, and are imbued 
with the principle of aristocratic privilege, I am 
willing to admit. That they transcend in refine¬ 
ment and punctilio the requisitions of a repub¬ 
lican," and the powers of a limited legislature, 1 
am also willing to concede. But the argument 
of the report involves the absurdity, that because 
parliamentary precedents, in England, go further 
on the subject of privilege than the Constitution 
authorizes, or the genius of our own institutions 
allows, therefore Congress is powerless in its own 
self-vindication finim the effects of any act, 
however monstrous, which a member could com¬ 
mit, unless it be done in open session. Tliis 
reasoning would make the Congress of the United 
States as incongruous in its general structure, as 
it would be pitiably helpless in its functional 











vitality. While embracing, in the apparent scope 
of its external powers, all that would confer 
...national dignity and renown, is it so impotent as 
to be without the sanctions of a necessary, self- 
protecting, internal police Some belligerent par¬ 
tisans in the two Houses might, in times of high 
excitement, be guilty of the disorder of presenting 
themselves, in battle array, against each other; 
and yet, because that disorder was not committed 
while the two Houses were assembled, or in the 
presence of either, no purgation of the unworthy 
members could ensue, no restraint upon unbridled 
passion could be interposed, no punishment to 
efface the public stain could be inflicted. Is this 
in accordance with the parliamentary history of 
the national Legislature, or with the plain reading 
of the Constitution itself.^ 

Happily for the political frame-work of our 
Government, this notion of individual immunity 
from all parliamentary law receives no counte¬ 
nance either from a fair interpretation of the writ¬ 
ten instrument, or from those principles of self- 
preservation which are inherent in all legislative 
assemblies. Such a system would be liable to 
two very grave objections—the imbecility to which 
it would reduce the law-making power, and the 
license to which, by reason of that imbecility, 
the members would be invited. 

That rule of construction which is applied to 
the Constitution in questions between the con¬ 
ferred powers of the General Government and 
the reserved rights of the States, would, in its 
application to the disciplinary functions of the 
Legislature itself, paralyze both branches of Con¬ 
gress in its control over the personal conduct of 
members. A different rule is essential to the 
respectability, the honor, and the dignity of its 
admitted powers. Public confidence would be 
gone, if a stranger who endeavored to bribe a 
member could not be punished by the body to 
whom the insult was offered, and public respect 
would be lost if the body could not be purged of 
a member, who had accepted a bribe. Full of 
mischief and danger as this doctrine is, it is the 
doctrine of this minority report. My reading of 
the Constitution and the practice of Congress arc 
totally at variance with the soundness of such a 
conclusion. 

Permit me to refer to some of the cases in elu¬ 
cidation of the legislative practice. In the case of 
Anderson vs. Dunn, reported in 6 Wheaton’s 
Reports, (decided in 1821,) the Supreme Court 
of the United States decided that this House has 
the right to punish a stranger who attempts to 
corrupt it by offering a bribe to one of its mem¬ 
bers. The principle of Anderson vs. Dunn had 
been recognized in the practice of this House long 
before the decision of the Supreme Court. In 
tlie year 1796, Mr. Madison reported, in the case 
of General Gunn, a Senator, that he was guilty of 
a breach of privilege, by challenging a member 
for a cause relating to the exercise of an act of 
representative discretion. The cases in the 
House of Randall and Whitney, which were 
nearly cotemporaneous with the case of Gunn, and 
that of Mr. Duane, in the Senate, in the year 
1800, were in exact coincidence with those which 
preceded and followed. 


More recently (in the year 1828) a writer fora 
newspaper was punished for assaulting the Pri¬ 
vate Secretary of the President, while on his way 
from one House to the other, in charge of an 
executive message. So recently as the year 
1832, General Houston, who was not a member, 
was voted to be guilty of violating the privileges 
of the House, by assaulting Mr. Stansbery for 
language uttered in debate. These are all in¬ 
stances of persons who had offended against the 
privileges of members; and yet,forsooth, accord¬ 
ing to the principles of this report, no privilege 
whatever exists, except exemption from arrest in 
civil proceedings, and from legal responsibility 
for a harmless speech—now, in either of the 
above-mentioned cases, if the offender had been a 
member, would not the delinquency be increased ? 
If Anderson, who offered a bribe, had been him¬ 
self of the body he sought to contaminate—if 
General Gunn,Mr. Jarvis, and General Houston, 
had all been members—would not the offense of 
sending a challenge in one case, of waylaying 
the President’s secretary in another, and of beat¬ 
ing the debater in the instance last named, have 
magnified and aggravated the charge } The an¬ 
swer is indisputable. But, as if no branch of 
the subject should want exemplification and 
proof, this reasoning is confirmed and elucidated 
by a striking precedent in the action of the Senate 
against William Blount, a member of their own 
body, so early as the year 1797. Blount was 
found guilty of tampering with an Indian inter¬ 
preter, and of attempting to excite distrust or 
hostility among certain Indian tribes towards the 
officers of the United States. Pie was expelled 
from the body he disgraced, by nearly a unani¬ 
mous vote, one Senator only voting in the nega¬ 
tive. 

Here, then, is presented an unbroken chain of 
precedents in favor of the power now asserted, 
almost from the foundation of the present Gov¬ 
ernment. But it is contended that an exception 
occurs—that of Mr. Marshall, a Senator from 
Kentucky, who, though accused in 1796 of an 
infamous crime, was not expelled for want of 
jurisdiction. It could not have escaped the 
sagacity of the honorable gentleman from Geor¬ 
gia, who cited Mr. Marshall’s case as one of a 
negative character on this question, that it cannot 
be introduced as an authority on either side. 
Perjury, which is a false oath taken before a 
judicial tribunal, and therefore specially concerns 
judicial proceedings, can only be established after 
a searching investigation in a court of law. The 
suit in which the alleged perjury was committed, 
was tried eighteen months before Mr. Marshall’s 
election to the Senate of the United States, and 
the charge which was publicly made, was pub¬ 
licly answered before his election. The commit¬ 
tee of the Senate, therefore, reported that it was 
improper to act in such a case. 

The charge was intended as a reproach, and 
was obviously the offspring of private malice. The 
staleness of the accusation, and the absence of 
all evidence to support it, are conspicuously ad¬ 
verted to in the report. The committee say: 

“ If, in the present case, the party has been guilty in the 
manner suggested, no reason has been alleged by the memo- 








6 


rialists u'hy he has not long since been tried in the State and 
district where he committed the offense. Until he is legally 
convicted, the principles of the Constitution and of the com¬ 
mon law concur in presumiHo that he is innocent.” 

The decision of the Senate in dismissing the 
complaint against Mr. Marshall \\^s in pursuance 
of the English parliamentary rule, which requires 
tliat, in cases of felonies and other infamous 
crimes charged against members, “ they be adjudged 
to remain of the House until after conviction.” 

' The same rule was adopted by this House 
when the member from California, whose case 
is at this moment under trial before a criminal 
court, was indicted for the crime of homicide. 

I concurred in the vote which refused to appoint 
a committee of investigation at that juncture, 
because a report upon it here was likely to inter¬ 
fere with that fair, unprejudiced, and impartial 
trial to which the accused was entitled. 

The case of John Smith must also be re¬ 
garded, for another reason, as sui generis, and as 
not coming within the line of authorities for or 
against the rule. Like the preceding examples, 
it will be found, upon examination, to be only 
apparently and not really exceptional. In the 
year 1808, Smith, who was a Senator from Ohio, 
was accused of participating with the famous 
Aaron Burr, in his alleged treasonable designs 
against the authorities of the United States. 
Party spirit and public clamor ran high against 
the unfortunate, perhaps criminal Burr. To what 
extent the principal and his accomplices are to 
be deemed guilty of meditated treason, is a his¬ 
torical question, more easily pronounced upon, 
than solved. Certain it is, a large majority of 
the Senate denounced Smith as a conspirator, 
and voted his expulsion; but failing to obtain the 
requisite majority of two thirds, by a single 
vote, the resolution was practically defeated. 
After this decision of his peers. Smith retired 
from public life, though he never formally re¬ 
signed his seat in the Senate. 

Upon this case. Judge Story, in his Comment¬ 
aries, pointedly remarks: “ The failure of the 
motion to expel did not arise from any doubt on 
the part of the Senate of their power to punish 
misdemeanors not done in the presence or view of 
the body.” These two cases, though anomalous, 
it may be confessed, form no exception to the 
unvarying uniformity of practice which has pre¬ 
vailed from the earliest period, in both branches 
of Congress, where the question fairly arose. 

Other precedents might be cited from the his¬ 
tory of the two Houses. The propriety of all is 
sustained, not merely by the ruling of the Su¬ 
preme Court in Anderson and Dunn, but sanc¬ 
tioned, I believe, by all the elementary writers 
on constitutional law. Mr. Rawle, in his “ View 
of the Constitution,” calls the right here asserted 
an “ implied power of punishing for contempts 
and infringements of the privileges of the two 
Houses,’’and declares that “ it is correctly de¬ 
duced from the Constitution.” Kent, whose ad¬ 
mirable work on American law has almost of 
itself the force of authority on many branches of 
the subject it discusses, emphatically approves 
of the decision of Anderson and Dunn. Judge 
Story not only does the same thing, but signalizes 


several of the precedents here cited as worthy of 
special approval. So far, therefoi’e, as authori¬ 
ties go, whether we regard the practice of the 
House, the decision of the Supreme Court, or 
the sentiments of legal writers, the principle con¬ 
tended for is abundantly established. 

Touching the case now under consideration, 
it is that of an assault committed by a member 
of this House on a member of the Senate, for 
words spoken in debate. It comes within the prin¬ 
ciple of the cases cited. The offense was occa¬ 
sioned by that legislative act, for which no mern- 
ber of either House can even be “ questioned’^ in 
any other place, and the injury was committed 
upon the person of the Senator who perforrned 
the act. The Senate of the United States, to which 
body the aggrieved member belongs, is a coordi¬ 
nate branch with us of the National Legislature, 
and I'epresents in the councils of the nation the 
dignity and rights of the States as political com¬ 
munities. This august assembly, as a constituent 
part of the law-making power of the Federal 
Goyernment, has made complaint of the ajBsault 
to this House, its fellow-constituent. The ques¬ 
tion is, have we the power to redress the injury 
of which that body complains, by punishing the 
assailant.? 

The Constitution, in giving to each House the 
right to punish its members for “ disorderly be¬ 
havior,” wisely leaves that offense without the 
restrictive definition which is now applied to it. 
In like manner, it submits the nature of the pun¬ 
ishment to the sound discretion of the respective 
Houses, when short of expulsion. What acts 
do and what acts do not amount to disorderly 
behavior, the Constitution has not defined. It is 
the special and enlightened province of the two 
Houses of Congress to decide that que'stion as 
often as it may arise. The Senate regards the act 
as disorderly behavior, within the meaning of the 
Constitution, and as such has made it a subject 
of complaint. 

But it ip argued from the position of the words 
“ disorderlybekavior” in the Constitution, that they 
mean simply, disorder in the violation of the t ides. 
In order to justify such an interpretation, it is 
plain that the language of the text must be added 
to, or interlined. Withoutgloss or interpolation 
the passage is thus written in the Constitution: 

“ Each House may determine the rules of its proceed¬ 
ings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with 
the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.” 

The seMtence is clearly divisible into three 
branches; one relates to the right of making rides, 
a second, the independent right of punishing 
members, and the third clause requires a majority 
of two thirds, if the punishment proceeds to the 
extremity of expulsion. How can the second 
clause be referred to or limited by the first with¬ 
out adscititious words.? If the true reading be, 
“ Each House may determine the rules of its pro¬ 
ceedings, punish its members for disorderly be¬ 
havior who violate these rules,” it may be asked 
why did not the clear-sighted framers of the in¬ 
strument so express their meaning, by other or 
su|Dplemental expressions.? 

The common and the cultivated eye of the 
country has read the sentence differently for more 










7 


>• 


than sixty years. Congress has never given it 
the construction now contended for, as no rule 
has ever been made for the punishment of disor¬ 
derly behavior. The words are too plain, the 
grammatical independence of the different clauses 
IS too clear, for the uncertainty of doubt or the 
ambiguity of cavil. Congress, whose practice 
has been consentaneous with the decision of the 
Supreme Court and the opinions of professional 
writers, has given to each part of the sentence its 
due force and a literal construction. If any prin¬ 
ciple in public affairs is ever to be considered as 
settled; if the ebb and flow of opinion are not 
always to fluctuate with the ceaseless billows of 
party strife; if the maxim, stare decisis, is ever to 
te admitted as sound in doctrine in these Halls of 
legislation, surely the constitutional power of this 
House to punish its members for disorderly be¬ 
havior should be regarded as finally established. 

It is for this House to say whether it will con¬ 
sistently maintain its ground, as a fixed principle, 
on this subject, or abandon it to the ruling spirit 
of the hour—to the ever-shifting sands of political 
accident and party necessity. It is for this House 
now, in the early days of its existence, to declare 
whether it will voluntarily so limit its jurisdic¬ 
tion, so cripple its own powers, and so lessen the 
means of its own purity, usefulness, and honor, 
as to deny itself the right of acting in the case 
before it. Will it furnish, as a precedent, a safe 
and flexible rule for the future, or a narrow and 
immalleable description of its faculties, alike in¬ 
consistent with its high attributes of power, as it | 
would be subversive of the character of a digni-1 
fied national assembly? Will it pronounce, by its | 
decision in this instance, thatdisordeWyfte/tai'ior can 
only be committed in the face of the House, and 
while in the transaction of its business? Would 
it not be a more prudent and conservative rule— 
one more congenial with other parts of the Con¬ 
stitution as well as its general frame—one more 
suitable to the dignity of Congres,and the honor 
of the nation—to declare, as an abiding and per¬ 
manent rule, that misconduct may be committed 
in or out of the House, if done during the session ? 
The exemption of members from civil arrest is, 
by the terms of the Constitution, coextensive 
with the session, and the time is even prolonged 
to going from and returning to the respective 
Houses. That the whole period of a session 
forms the only safe limit to our jurisdiction over 
acts of disorderly behavior, is evident from the 
continuing nature of a legislative body. In con¬ 
templation of law, the session of the two Houses 
of Congress is uninterrupted by recess or sepa¬ 
rate adjournment, until its final action is term¬ 
inated by the concurring action of both. In 
England, the whole session of a Parliament is 
considered as but one day, and is, therefore, con¬ 
tinuous from the beginning to its close. (See, as to 
this, Lex. Pari., C. 2; 1 Inst., 7,27,28; I Blacks., 
186; Bro. Abv. Parliament., 86.) As, therefore, 
the Senator was engaged in his seat in the Senate 
Chamber, upon a temporary adjournment of the 
sitting, when he received the assault, I conceive 
that our jurisdiction is as complete as our path of 
duty is clear. 

In arriving at this conclusion, I disclaim being 


the champion of any party or sectional issue. If 
the assailant were any northern member, or one 
of my own colleagues from Pennsylvania, I 
should, in either case, unhesitatingly vote as a 
sense of public duty will compel me to vote on 
this occasion. While I deliberately entertain the 
opinions of a northern man on the subject of 
African slavery, I hold no sympathy with the 
extreme and latitudinarian opinions of the assault¬ 
ed Senator, and I emphatically condemn the per¬ 
sonalities of his speech, no less, but certainly no 
more, than those other and previous personalities 
which provoked them. But, however we may all 
regret and disapprove, as 1 certainly do, of the 
spirit and tone of that Senator’s language, I fail 
to perceive in it the least justification or excuse 
for blows. 

It is alleged, in extenuation of this resort to vio¬ 
lence, that the Senator from Massachusetts not 
merely delivered a speech in the Senate which, 
full of personal invective, was deliberately writ¬ 
ten out and printed before its delivery, but that 
copies were multiplied and circulated by himself. 
It IS further asserted that he attacked the revo¬ 
lutionary fame of South Carolina, and the char¬ 
acter for veracity of an absent and venerable 
Senator, who was a near kinsman of the offender 
before us. On the other side it is replied that 
Massachusetts, her history, her legislation, and 
her Senator, had all been the subjects of pre¬ 
vious and I'epeated attacks. But suppose it were 
otherwise, does the attack on South Carolina and 
an absent kinsman justify or excuse personal 
violence in the Senate Chamber? The member 
of this House, if he had calmly reflected, would 
have seen that disparagement and invective, 
under such circumstances, whether historical or 
personal, would inevitably recoil upon a speaker 
who could so far forget the dignity of the place 
and the proprieties'of the occasion as to indulge 
in both. The fame of South Carolina and the 
repute of her absent Senator required no avenger. 
The offensive parts of the speech delivered by the 
Senator from Massachusetts were exposed and 
replied to; among others, by the eminent Senator 
from Michigan, his personal friend, in the most 
cutting terms of reproof, before the sitting was 
closed on which the speech was ended. 

But the resentment of the assailing member 
was not to be appeased either by the fact that the 
attack was provoked, or that its “ unpatriotic and 
un-American^’ character had been reprehended 
and exposed. Nor was it to be by any token of 
mere indignity and disgrace. It sought the inflic¬ 
tion, not merely of an ignominious, but a san¬ 
guinary punishment, by a succession of violent 
blows with a cane over the most vital and unpro¬ 
tected part of the Senator’s person, without any 
apparent regard to the serious, if not fatal, results 
which might ensue. 

Members of Congress are assembled here as 
law-makers. When they forget the high trust 
with which they are invested, and become not 
merely breakers of law, but commit breaches of 
the peace, they exemplify, not civilized, buitsav¬ 
age liberty, libertas quidlibet faciendi; they act in 
practical subservience to a higher law than the le¬ 
gal Government of the land; or they may properly 













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be said to be in subjection to brute forccj which is 
an instinct of the loioest law of our nature. Nothing 
but the absolute dominion of law, however re¬ 
strictive and distasteful, can preserve the liberties 
we boast, since the first lesson of high civilization 
and enlightened freedom is that which teaches 
implicit and unquestioning obedience to its man¬ 
dates— that first lesson of which northern re¬ 
sisters of fugitive slave laws, southern pugilists, ; 
and sympathizing fillibusters, have much to i 
learn. ! 

It is intimated in the minority report, and the I 
argument has been repeated on this floor, that j 
the injury complained of could be well redressed, I 
without any intervention of Congress, by the , 
ordinary judicatures of the country. Is such a ‘ 
suggestion well founded? Does a pecuniary pen- j 
alty give this adequate redress? Can we pass ! 
this by as only an aggravated assault, perpe- ! 
.trated by one private person on another? It is j 
impossible so to regard it. Consequences have j 
followed which no sentence or verdict of an 


ordinary court can repair. Massachusetts has 
been deprived for weeks of the votes and ser¬ 
vices of her Senator by a violent assault upon 
his person. Can a civil court recompense her 
for the loss of her representative, in the shape 
of damages for his sufferings? V/ill the fine of 
three hundred dollars, which has been imposed 
by the criminal court of this city, soothe her 
sensibilities, wounded through his degradation, 
or avenge the indignity of such an affront offered 
to Congress and the country? 

I regard every blow which was struck at the- 
Senator as a blow dealt upon the honor of this 
nation—as a blow amied at the dignity of the 
honored Commonwealth of Massachusetts—as 
a blow inflicted on the Senate of the United 
States, and as a blow deeply affecting the reputa¬ 
tion of this House. I shall, therefore, vote in 
favor of the first resolution reported by the ma-- 
jority of the committee; and, with a view to this, 

I shall ask, at the proper time, for a division of 
the question on the two resolutions. 












